London may not have as many massive skyscrapers as New York, but it does have amazing quality buildings rising everywhere, each one of them respecting their surroundings and paying close attention to their street level facades. New York may have bigger builings, but London has far better streetscapes!

Now knock off the city vs. city and keep posting updates of those incredible projects! There has got to be 100+ highrise buildings going up across the city!

This is probably a very broad question, but how does zoning in London work? I have a document here that says a site is suitable for "600 HR/HA". I assume the denominator is hectares, but what does HR stand for? I'm in Chicago so obviously I don't know anything about how things like this fucntion in London.

This is probably a very broad question, but how does zoning in London work? I have a document here that says a site is suitable for "600 HR/HA". I assume the denominator is hectares, but what does HR stand for? I'm in Chicago so obviously I don't know anything about how things like this fucntion in London.

It's a measure of appropriate residential density, taking into account the surrounding infrastructure and level of urbanisation.

I remember seeing the twins towers from the top of the empire state building in the early 90`s...Was blown away by the vastness and the fact it was so far away! London will never compete with New York in a vertical sense obviously, i wouldn't want it to. But in sheer size and depth London is special i think. Especially as in the next 10 years you'll be able to see canery/wood wharf from a tower cluster in Nine elms or even Croydon.
Keep up the great work on the updates guys, im addicted!

Its interesting to see how New York has developed over the years. The shots of the skyline shown in various episodes of friends show the progression. Same with london as the city has become taller, there was quite a while when it was just the Norman Foster building near the tower and seeing that area progressing is good.

London will never compete with New York in a vertical sense obviously, i wouldn't want it to.

Only because of geography, if central London had been an island, it too would have been built vertically on the same scale as NY, but available land meant the easy option of spreading out was taken, keeping everything low rise.

Only now with planning rules creating an artificial legal boundary is London having to embrace vertical living.

Only because of geography, if central London had been an island, it too would have been built vertically on the same scale as NY, but available land meant the easy option of spreading out was taken, keeping everything low rise.

Only now with planning rules creating an artificial legal boundary is London having to embrace vertical living.

Manhattan's skyline stretches the 5 miles between Lower and Midtown Manhattan. For London to have a similar skyline, it would have to stretch all the way from The City to CW.

London and New York couldn't be more different. They both offer totally different but equally brilliant options and urban experiences, which is why they both attract people. Neither should want to be more like the other as it's their current distinctiveness that means that they compete in such an energetic way.

Tower hamlets, where 50% of all bangladeshis in UK are, I've never been even though I am one of them. Have you guys been and do you like the restaraunts? also nice buildings, are their not height restrictions in Canary Wharf?

There are height restrictions around Canary Wharf due to its proximity to London City Airport. Closure of the airport, which is being sought in some quarters, would lift these restrictions.

The London Forum Census found that 18 of our 90 forumers live in East London. Of those 18, many live in Tower Hamlets. Of its 254,000 residents, 32% are Bangladeshi as of the 2011 Census.

Concerning its restaurant scene, perhaps the most famous locale is Brick Lane. Well known due to the authentic cuisine on offer. Here's a two-part Al Jazeera special on Brick Lane cuisine: Part 1 | Part 2.

The developers listed don't have a problem in funding these proposals.

Furthermore, considering the price of prime property in London, they all stand to make handsome returns. Take Baltimore Tower: the first 80 residential units were sold for an average of £500,000 each, with 20% paid up-front as a deposit. And that was on one weekend alone, in Singapore alone. Before the tower had even started construction.

If a developer can raise £8,000,000 from deposits alone in just one weekend and just one foreign market, selling apartments in a tower that doesn't yet exist, they have no problem financing them.